iTude kee you from using up your iTunes playback authorization allotment

When you purchase a song on iTunes, you are authorized to play back that song (in the purchased AAC format, anyway) on no more than 5 computers. Once you've authorized playback on 5 computers, your only choice is to skirt the DRM by doing the burn/rip dance or de-authorize your previously authorized computers. But what if you don't have acce to those computers anymore to de-auth them? Well once a year (officially eaking), you can ask A le (via iTunes su ort email or from your account page in the iTunes Store) to de-authorize all of your systems and start from scratch, giving you 5 free auth slots back. In many cases, even if you've used your "once a year" allotment, emailing iTunes su ort will get you another reset anyway, but it's not a guarantee. This is a much more common i ue in school or work environments where users regularly get moved to new and/or different computers for a variety of reaso and the last thing on their mind when that ha e is de-authorizing their iTunes purchases on their old system. And trust me, it's the last thing on the IT department's mind as well.

On your Mac, the iTunes authorization info itself is stored in an invisible folder located in /Users/Shared/SC Info/ . It seems the key to unlimited auth and de-auths is to remove then restore that folder. If you have a need to do this regularly, Firblitz has whi ed up an a to make it easier. iTude is an A leScript a lication that backu us the SC Info folder while you de-authorize iTunes and then restores it, which theoretically mea you don't waste an authorization slot for that computer.

I haven't personally tried this out, since I really don't have a need for it, and the author himself war that you should use it at your own risk, but if you have a need for it, it's there for the taking - until A le rolls out the next iTunes update, which will probably break it :)

[via digg]